ALIEN 3 - officially a Dog or Ox alien?


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The movie was a dog, that's for sure.

:D

Actually I have a weird fondness for Alien3. It's bad, but it's bad for interesting reasons. I've watched it a dozen times or so, and what strikes is how it starts out so well, and then goes so very, very badly. Not many movies manage to self-destruct quite so impressively.
 

For me Alien 3 is a case of a director making lemonade out of lemons. As its own film its pretty good, but as a follow up to Alien they just chose a horrible premise.

But Fincher's direction was masterful. What a mood! And the cinematography was beautiful, even if it was a little too "brown." I'm just kind of fascinated with the picture. Its unpleasant yet strangely compelling. Depressing, but with a surprisingly high rewatch value. Quite the unique animal.

Another reason I'm partial to it is I've owned a bootleg workprint of it for about five years, with *no* musical score and a lot of scenes that ended up in the recent special edition.

Watching the movie without music makes the whole thing play like you're watching real events that were captured by surveillance cameras at a futuristic prison. No manufactured tension or drama, just people emoting and running for their lives. A very unique cinematic experience.
 

In the novelization of Alien 3, it was an ox alien.

In the comic book of Alien 3, it was a dog alien.

So it looks like 2 adaptations have it as a dog alien, and 1 adaptation has an ox alien.
 

Dark Jezter said:
In the novelization of Alien 3, it was an ox alien.

In the comic book of Alien 3, it was a dog alien.

So it looks like 2 adaptations have it as a dog alien, and 1 adaptation has an ox alien.
No it should be 2 for dog (theatrical movie, comic book) and 2 for ox (SE DVD, novelization). But the alien itself is much more doglike than oxlike so I'd have to go with the dog. That and the fact that the SE was neither theatrical nor director approved.
 
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The novel was written first and the alien was an ox. If I recall correctly they shot the movie first with an ox-alien. However, the test audience didn't like the ox and suggested that a dog would have been better, so they changed it. Still, there is a shot of oxen somewhere in the beginning of the movie (just to show their existance on the prison planet).

I thought an ox-alien was a good idea when I read the novel. I didn't like the idea of changing it into a dog. If they changed it back it I kind of like it.
 


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